An Overview of Chachapoya Archaeology and History Adriana Von Hagen
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An Overview of Chachapoya Archaeology and History Adriana von Hagen Introduction In a remote corner of northern Peru, the ancient Chachapoya once held sway over a vast territory, today scattered with the distinctive remains of their trademark cliff tombs and hamlets of circular structures. Feared warriors and famed shamans, the Chachapoya flourished from around AD 800 until their violent conquest by the Inkas in the 1470s. The arrival of the Spaniards in the 1530s spelled the end of the Inka empire, and brought renewed hardship to the Chachapoya as the conquistadors systematically seized their land and imposed forced labor and tribute burdens. More recently, looters and vandals have engaged archaeologists in a desperate race to save the remains of this great, but little known civilization. Despite over a century of exploration and more recent archaeological and archival research, our understanding of the region’s prehistory remains fragmentary. What little we know comes from a variety of sources: archaeological excavation and exploration, nineteenth century travelogues, the accounts of the first Spaniards to enter the region, visitas (fact-finding missions by Spanish officials), the legal squabbles of disenfranchised local lords —kurakas— and the frustratingly meager references in the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega, Pedro de Cieza de León, Antonio de la Calancha and a handful of others. Curiously, none of these three men ever set foot in Chachapoyas: Garcilaso based his account on the lost chronicle of Blas Valera, Cieza gathered his description from an unknown informant, and Calancha based his writings on those of an anonymous Augustinian friar summoned to Chachapoyas by early Spanish settlers. In the wake of initial sixteenth-century Spanish interest and settlement in the region, Chachapoyas became mired in economic stagnation. Isolated from mainstream Peru, the region looked east to Moyobamba and the Huallaga for trade contacts. The shortage of native labor was especially acute as peoples succumbed to the epidemics that beset the region or fled to the “free lands” to the east, where they could live beyond the control of the Spanish colonial administration and the onus of tribute. In 1843, however, the landmark “discovery” of the ancient citadel of Kuelap put Chachapoyas back on the map, at least scientifically. When Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a judge from Chachapoyas, stumbled upon Kuelap in 1843, the site had been abandoned and reclaimed by forest for some 300 years. The report on his discovery remained unpublished until 1892, but once word got out, though, it attracted a stream of notable and intrepid nineteenth-century explorers such as Adolph Bandelier, Ernst Middendorf, Charles Wiener and Antonio Raimondi. Plodding across the northern Andes on mule back and crossing the Marañón river on balsa rafts, it took them over a week to reach Chachapoyas from Cajamarca. Some 50 years later, archaeologists Henry and Paule Reichlen carried out the first scientific excavations in the region. The Reichlens too came by mule from Cajamarca, but crossed the Marañón on a suspension bridge built in 1905 at Chacanto, near Balsas. The discovery of Gran Pajatén in the early 1960s sparked a new flurry of exploration and archaeological research, followed by excavations at Kuelap. In 1983 the Peruvian government created Río Abiseo National Park to protect pockets of pristine montane forest, threatened and endangered fauna and many archaeological sites, including Gran Pajatén, the focus of a multi-disciplinary study from 1985 to 1990. The century culminated with the discovery —alas, by looters— of a Chachapoya- Inka burial site at Laguna de los Cóndores. Although huaqueros (looters) had ransacked the tombs, the extraordinarily well-preserved mummies and burial offerings salvaged by archaeologists offered researchers a unique opportunity to learn about Chachapoya and Inka burial practices, Inka rule in the region, and provided a tantalizing glimpse of the little known Chachapoya art style. An Ancient Land The Chachapoya occupied a vast swath of the northern Peruvian Andes, embraced by the Marañón to the west and the Huallaga to the east. Garcilaso noted that Chachapoyas “is more than fifty leagues [250 kilometers] long and twenty [100 kilometers] broad, apart from the part that projects to Muyupampa [Moyobamba], a length of thirty leagues [150 kilometers] more…” (A sixteenth-century Spanish league is roughly equivalent to 5 kilometers or about the distance one can walk in an hour). At the same time, in fact, the Chachas —as they are often called in the early documents— may have been one of many ethnic subgroups, along with the Chillaos, the Pacllas, the Chilchos and myriad others, that inhabited the province later called “Chachapoyas” by the Inkas. Garcilaso’s description mirrors the province of Chachapoyas as the Inkas defined it and does not necessarily reflect the extent of pre- Inka Chachapoyas. His view, however, is widely accepted by scholars and students alike as both the Chachapoya archaeological and ethnohistorical culture area. With Garcilaso’s designation in mind, the flood plain of the Utcubamba, in the province of Bagua, formed the northern frontier. The Pipos valley east of the modern city of Chachapoyas, northeast to the lake of Pomacocha and perhaps as far east as Moyobamba marked the northeastern frontier. The region of Huacrachucos south of Pías, today in the department of La Libertad, signaled the southern boundary. Over the centuries, the Marañón —called the Hatun Mayu, or “big river” in Colonial documents—created a formidable, western boundary. Too wide to span with ancient bridge building technology, people crossed the river on balsa rafts until the construction of modern bridges in the twentieth century. The region’s southeastern frontier appears to have been more porous, with settlements such as Gran Pajatén, Llaqtacocha near Laguna de los Cóndores, and several other sites on the forested slopes of the Huallaga drainage serving as staging areas for yearly or scheduled encounters between the Chachapoya and lower montane or cloud forest groups such as the Cholón and Hibito. The region straddled vital entradas, or gateways, to the eastern lowlands, source of highly valued tropical forest products and produce. Garcilaso added that “[the province] then had more than forty thousand inhabitants, and is extremely inaccessible.” Calancha claimed that more than “twenty thousand tribute-paying Indians” resided in Chachapoyas. Yet, we will never know the size of the Chachapoya population on the eve of the Inka conquest in the mid-fifteenth century, despite the abundance of ruined settlements. Were all these sites occupied simultaneously? Only a systematic study of settlement patterns and changes in architecture over time, coupled with archaeological excavations and carbon14 dates will reveal the region’s complete occupation history. The setting Modern Chachapoyas embraces a variety of ecosystems, ranging from the dry tropical forest along the Marañón to the high grasslands, or paramo, and down again to the cloud forest flanking the easternmost slopes of the Andes. Early and modern descriptions concur that the region was rugged and inaccessible (at least for Europeans), although some accounts, such as Calancha’s, exaggerated the hardships somewhat: “[it is] a land of rugged mountains where it always rains, a mountainous land filled with leeches, abundant tigers, and full of wild trees…” The dry tropical forest along the Marañón ranges from 900 to 1800 meters, and is distinguished by its scattered forest, native Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea peruviana) and succulents. In antiquity farmers planted cotton, coca and aji peppers, among other crops. From the dry forest the landscape gives way to the humid montane forest, known locally as the quichua, ranging from 1800 to 3200 meters. The area is well suited to traditional staple crops such as maize, beans and squash. Yet, deforestation by farmers clearing the slopes for fields and pastures for livestock has left only a few pockets of primary forest. From the montane forest the land rises again to the tropical sub-alpine paramo, a transitional zone between the drier puna of southern Peru and the wetter paramo of Ecuador. Ranging from 3200 to 4500 meters, the area is characterized by its grasslands, stunted bushes and stands of quinual (Polylepis sp.) and quishwar trees (Buddleia Inkana). Remains of ancient agricultural terraces and field systems point to intensive use in antiquity, when farmers cultivated high altitude grains such as quinoa and chocho as well as tubers, especially potatoes. From the high grasslands the land descends once again, giving way to the tropical montane wet forest. Many species of palms, bromeliads, orchids, mosses and ferns typify the vegetation of this zone of high rainfall and swirling clouds. The Chachapoya The evidence suggests that at times the ancient Chachapoya interacted with cultures living to the east, west and north of the Marañón, while at other times they flourished in relative isolation. Although the Chachapoya played a part in the greater Andean cultural sphere, their art and architecture convey a bold and independent spirit that sets them apart from their neighbors. “Classic” Chachapoya civilization —with its hallmark cliff tombs, circular constructions and masonry friezes— appears to have coalesced around AD 800 and continued into Inka times, ca. 1470-1532. Some scholars have suggested that highland peoples from the west of the Marañón settled